I found out yesterday that she’s a girl, and I plan to name her Ava Grace like the little girl we met that day at the Elizabethan Gardens. I saw her on the ultrasound yesterday, and she has ten fingers and ten toes and I can’t wait to see if her hair’s dark like yours or red like mine.
Ava Grace is only one of several major changes in my life. Another is that I now live in Boone, far away from the Outer Banks, in the hills of Appalachia. Thanksgiving was Ms. Sebastian’s last night of work at the Pamlico House. After I left your house, I ran to her, and when she got off work, we drank tea across from each other at her kitchen table. Surrounded by moving boxes, she invited me to leave the Banks and join her in Boone. I had no other options, so I did.
We live in a little house with views of the mountains. It’s near her son, Patrick, who’s got shaggy brown hair and kind eyes and is a professor of English at Appalachian State University. Her spare bedroom is my room, and soon it will be Ava Grace’s nursery too.
I don’t know how I will ever repay Ms. Sebastian’s kindness, but if there is ever a chance, I will take it. She is so much more than a friend, sometimes I imagine my own mother sent her to me as an angel to look after me on this journey. I am so thankful for her.
I called my sister Kyrstin the day after Thanksgiving. She wasn’t surprised to hear that things didn’t work out between me and the Governor’s Son. She wished me luck and said she would tell Daddy that I had run away. Believe it or not, Erik, that lie will be much kinder than the reality that I’m unmarried and expecting your child.
I have a job at Harris Teeter, a really nice grocery store in Boone. After I have the baby, I may try to find another waitressing position. My tips at the Pamlico House were good.
Ava Grace wiggles inside me all the time, and I cry myself to sleep, missing you and mourning your loss and dreaming of your face. Those dreams are brutal, reminding me in such minute detail of the way you touched me, Erik—the way you looked at me and told me you loved me. I miss you so much, it eats me up inside, but you are gone, and the only way I can survive your loss is to imagine you are dead.
My tears are smearing the ink so I will close now.
Merry Christmas, my Erik.
Laire
***
The Second Christmas
Dear Erik,
So much has happened in a year, it’s hard to imagine it’s been that long since I opened the journal and wrote to you, but I will try to fill you in on all that’s happened.
We have a daughter, Ava Grace Cornish, who’s seven months old and the happiest baby you’ve ever seen. And why shouldn’t she be happy? Ms. Sebastian (aka Nana and Judith) dotes on her like the grandmother she lost so long ago, and Uncle Patrick has probably purchased every stuffed animal to be found in Boone. They cover her nursery (my old room) and my room (the spare room, now mine) and Judith’s room (Nana wouldn’t have it any other way), and Ava laughs and laughs when we make them dance and squeak.
She laughs all the time, Erik, and she has your smile.
She has your dark eyes too.
And your beautiful, regal nose.
But she lucked out (!) and got my red hair. You can’t win ’em all!
She is my shining light and the joy of my life, and no matter what happened with the Governor’s Son, I will always be grateful to you, my Erik, for giving her to me.
After I had her, I had some very tough days, missing my father and sisters, and, of course, you. At one point, I had a notion of driving to Duke and presenting Ava Grace to the Governor’s Son. But Judith showed me some pictures of him on Google. She showed me a picture of him holding hands with Vanessa Osborn at a Duke formal, and another of him at his sister’s graduation from high school in June.
Most painful of all, she showed me a picture of the Governor’s Son kissing Vanessa Osborn at a party in Raleigh the same July I was falling in love with you, Erik. It was crushing, of course. It was evidence of everything the Governor’s Wife had told me that terrible Thanksgiving: he’d been with Van and me at the same time. And in the end, he’d chosen Van.
After that, I put away foolish notions of driving to Duke or ever reaching out to the Governor’s Son. I reminded myself that I never knew him. And I forced myself to move on for Ava’s sake.
My Christmas cards to my father and Issy were returned to sender unopened this year, just as they were last year, but Kyrstin’s wasn’t returned. I hope and pray that someday my father and sisters will forgive me and find space for me and my daughter in their lives again.